Taking Notez – Island Pond Consulting

I had a few minutes the other day and decided to check out using the IBM Installation Manager to install the beta for IBM WebSphere Portal 8. Here is my own flavor of the install guide:

Note a PDF is available:

To install WebSphere Portal Express and IBM Content Manager Beta on a Windows 32 bit operating system you will need the following files: WAS8-1.zip, WAS8-2.zip,   WP8-1.zip, and WP8-2.zip. For other platforms consider the following table:

At the time this document was composed the files could be obtained from a download link at: https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/lotus/portalopenbeta/download.shtml Note that the download site also includes files for a VMWare instance.

The installation employs the IBM Installation Manager. Beginning with WebSphere Application Server V7 Feature Packs, IBM Installation Manager is used to install, modify, or update products including fix packs, infixes, and product features. It can work with local and remote repositories.
The IBM Education Assistant offers information on IBM Installation Manager. For an overview, examine the WebSphere Application Server V7 Feature Packs and locate the Installation Manager overview if you are not already familiar with IBM Installation Manager.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ieduasst/v1r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.iea.wpi_v6/wpswid/6.1/WID/WBIV61_WIDInstallationManager/player.html

Some organizations will be concerned about the graphical nature of the IBM Installation Manager. To this point, the manager can be silently installed. Additionally, organizations can record response files using the IBM Installation Manager for silent install of products. The Education Assistant includes a lab demonstrating this scenario applied to IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.

For this lab I am using an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance of a Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter Service Pack 1 64bit on Intel Xenon ES430 @2.66GHz 3.94 GHz. Capacity: Memory=7.50 GB Disc (including expanded binaries): 35 GB 12 GB free.

Merge the WAS8-1 and WAS8-2 folders.
Prepare the binary folders before configuring them as source repositories used by the IBM Installation Manager.
For WebSphere Application Server move the ‘native’ folder from WAS8-2 into WAS8-1. For WebSphere Portal move the db2 installer into the native folder of the WP8-1\WP8_Express\native folder. For this lab the file moved is found in WP8-4\native and is named db2installer.win64_8.0.0.20119222311.zip.

Install the IBM Installation Manager

The installer is located in the expanded binary file WP8-1 in the IIM_V15 folder and is named install.exe. (figure 1)

Figure 1

Select the package for the IBM Installation Manager and click the Next button. (figure 2)

Figure 2

Read the license agreement and if you wish to install the product select the radio button to accept the license agreement and then click the Next button. (figure 3)

Figure 3
You can accept the default install path or change it. When ready, click the Next button to continue. (figure 4)

Figure 4

A summary of the install settings will appear. Click the Install button if you are satisfied with the choices and settings to install IBM Installation Manager. (figure 5)

Figure 5

If the product installs successfully a message will appear. If there is a failure review the log files and resolve the underlying issues before attempting to reinstall the product. When you are ready to continue click the Restart Installation Manager button to restart the program. (figure 6)

Figure 6

After installing the IBM Installation Manager configure the repository list to include the extracted IBM WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Application Server binaries downloaded and extracted for this project. The repository list bust be ordered such that the repository for WebSphere Application Server is listed first and the repository for IBM WebSphere Portal is listed second.

Steps for Configuring the IIM Repositories
The repository configuration is used to provide package data to the tool for installation. To configure the IIM repositories locate the menu bar of the application and select File > Preferences. In the preferences interface locate the left side navigation and click Repositories. Then, in the detail pane to the right click the Add Repository button. A dialog box for browsing to the repository.config file will appear. (figure 7)

You will add a repository definition for WebSphere Application Server and for WebSphere Portal. The repository.config file for the WAS is located in the WAS8-1 extracted binary location. The repository.config file for WP is located in the WP8-1 extracted binary location.

Figure 7
Once you have added the repositories ensure that they are in the correct order as this defines the order of installation. The WAS repository must be first in the list. (figure 8)

Figure 8
Click the OK button.
Click the Install link to begin installation. (figure 9)

Figure 9
Select the packages to install. In this lab you will select all of the packages. (figure 10)

Figure 10

Indicate that you have read and whether you accept the product license. If you wish to continue, choose to accept the license and click the Install button.

The IIM stores some package installation information in a shared file location. Set this. In this example the default location is acceptable.

Click the Next button to continue. Then set the location of the application binaries for both the application server and the portal. In this lab change the path from the default to C:\IBM\Websphere…. (figure 12)

Figure 12
Be sure to set the property for each of the application binaries folders (WAS and WP8). Click Next to continue.

On the next panel in the wizard select additional product languages as needed then click Next to continue. (figure 13)

Figure 13
Set the product feature choices. In this lab the default are selected. (figure 14)

Figure 14

Credentials for the WebSphere Application Server and the WebSphere Portal administrators as well as for DB2 are to be set. The password for the DB2 administrator must match the system password policy. There is a test button for this purpose. (figures 15 & 16).

Figure 15

Figure 16

Click Next to continue.
The summary page should be reviewed, selections should be confirmed. When ready to install click Install to continue. (figure 17)

Figure 17

When the install is complete choose the radio button to launch First Steps. Then click the Finish button to conclude the install.

This ends the procedure guide to install WebSphere Portal 8 Beta 2 on a Windows system.